


The little space in between

by theleftglove



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Fusion, First Meetings, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-20
Updated: 2014-04-20
Packaged: 2018-01-20 02:43:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1493698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theleftglove/pseuds/theleftglove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock and John meet on a train in Europe and quickly develop a connection. They agree to spend a single night together walking around Vienna to kill time before John has to catch a plane in the morning; however, as the night goes on, they find that letting each other go is far harder than they initially thought. Before Sunrise fusion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The little space in between

**Author's Note:**

> I love the movie Before Sunrise (if you haven't seen it, do it right now, it's brilliant) and I really like the concept of developing a very strong connection with a complete stranger, so I decided to explore it with Sherlock and John and see where that leads. This fic is inspired by the movie, but other than the beginning, I won't borrow that much from it.
> 
> The title comes from this quote from the film: "I believe if there's any kind of God it wouldn't be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between. If there's any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something. I know, it's almost impossible to succeed but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt."

If there was one thing John Watson was good at, it was attention to detail. Observing, cataloguing and reaching conclusions about his surroundings was vital for a medical student; in a way—and this was something he loved about medicine—diagnosing a patient was not unlike solving a puzzle. John rather liked puzzles; in fact, he fancied himself quite good at them. But that was before he met Sherlock Holmes.

It all began on a train.

John sat by the window watching the scenery, but for all his attention to detail, the rivers, trees, farms and cattle blurred by too fast for him to appreciate them properly. His chin rested on his palm in what could have been a gesture of concentration, but in his case merely indicated boredom; three weeks of looking out the glass could make anyone immune even to the most impressive of sights.

A couple sat at the very front of the car; the man held gingerly a somewhat crumpled newspaper and he was looking at it with scarce attention, turning every few seconds to glance nervously at the woman sitting next to him. The woman in question—his wife, John reckoned—stared determinately ahead, as if resolute to ignore her husband. When the man hesitantly addressed the woman—in German, John realized—she replied in a tone so disdainful, John inwardly cringed. As their conversation progressed, the volume of their voices grew so loud that the other passengers began to look at them disapprovingly; when the dispute reached its peak, the woman slapped the newspaper off the man’s hands.

Across the hall from them sat a young man, a disdainful expression plain on his face. His eyes—a pale, indescribable color, somewhere between blue and green with what looked like flicks of gold around the irises—roamed the car intently and rested on John for a moment so brief, he couldn’t be sure he hadn’t imagined it. He got up gracefully from his seat, retrieved a small carry-on from the luggage compartment, walked briskly down the hall and came to sit opposite from John. He was tall and a bit too thin, but it suited him; with his milky complexion, dark curls and long limbs, he looked slightly out of place, like a figure come alive from a book long forgotten. He was sharply dressed in black trousers and a plum-coloured shirt that, at first glance, made him look older, but from up close John realized he was in fact very young.

John looked at the stranger in front of him. Their eyes met and John offered him a smile. Angry voices were still clearly audible in the background. John leaned towards the pale stranger, and in what he hoped sounded like a casual, friendly tone, he asked:

“Do you have any idea what they were arguing about?”

The man eyed him for a moment, deciding, John figured, if he was worth his time.

“My German is not very good,” he replied. He had a deep, velvety voice and spoke in what John recognized as a public school accent. John felt suddenly inadequate, so he gave the stranger a tight smile and turned his head towards the window. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the pale boy hesitate for a moment before addressing him again.

“He’s cheating on her,” he added. John stared at him skeptically.

“I thought you said your German wasn’t good.”

“It isn't. It’s not as if I got that from their conversation,” the boy replied. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and John thought he saw the tips of his ears going a bit red.

“Then how could you possibly know?” asked John. The man across the hall appraised him for a moment, his chin jutting forward somewhat defiantly, before answering.

“I didn’t know, I saw. Look at their complexions; he’s sporting a tan and she isn’t. It doesn’t look like an artificial tan, so obviously he’s been travelling without her. But there are no tan lines on his wrists, which means he’s been sunbathing; pleasure, not business, then. He’s dyed his hair in the past couple of weeks, you can clearly see the slight discoloration at the beginning of his hairline. His clothes are baggy on him, but they’re a year old at most, which indicates a recent weight loss. He’s wearing contacts, but he keeps blinking like he isn’t used to them. We can assume his interest in personal appearance is fairly recent. Then there’s his wedding ring; unlike his wife’s, it looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in years, even though his watch and the chain round his neck look polished, state of the marriage right there. So, travelling for pleasure without his wife and a recently developed interest in his personal appearance? He’s having an affair.” The man spoke with such speed John’s brain seemed to lag for a bit before grasping his words entirely. When he was finished, he looked at John expectantly, his right eyebrow slightly raised.

“That…was amazing,” said John, and he smiled brightly at the pale stranger, who stared at him incredulously.

“That’s not...” the boy trailed off. He looked down at his clasped hands, resting between his knees, before addressing John again. “People don’t usually say that,” he finished lamely.

“What do people usually say, then?” inquired John. He was confused by the skinny boy’s seemingly embarrassed reaction. If he possessed such observational skills, John thought, he should be positively proud of them. Instead, the young man looked shy and uncomfortable, which John found immensely puzzling. And John Watson didn’t like leaving puzzles unsolved.

“Piss off,” the stranger replied. John stared at him for a moment before deciding the lad wasn’t having him on, and then chuckled. The boy looked so thoroughly bewildered and unamused that John couldn’t help laughing again.

“Seems like you’ve been meeting the wrong sorts of people,” John finally said to the boy, who rewarded him with a grin so hesitant and fragile-looking that John wondered if he didn’t smile often. In that moment he looked impossibly young, and John felt something—not quite affection, not quite pity—tugging at his heart.

“Listen, I was thinking about going to the lunch cart sometime soon, would you like to come with me?” John blurted out the words before knowing he was going to say them, but he was pleased to realize he didn’t regret them. The other boy’s eyes widened in disbelief, but he beamed and nodded. They both stood up without another word and smiled at each other one last time before walking out of the car and away from the noise made by loud voices still shouting angrily in German.

Once they were standing up, John realized the height difference he had estimated between them was even more pronounced than he had thought. John reckoned the other boy was, at the very least, fifteen centimeters taller than him, and the fact that he was clearly younger annoyed him slightly. The slender boy moved with a quiet ease that John envied; there was something ethereal about him, and John found himself very nearly hypnotized by the way his arms dangled gracefully by his sides, his long, elegant fingers curled at the tips.

They sat down and ordered coffee. The boy’s gaze was fixed on him and John shifted in his seat uncomfortably. He felt curiously exposed under the stranger’s piercing eyes.

“Say, don’t get me wrong, I think it’s brilliant. What you can do, I mean. But could you do something for me?” John asked.

“Yes?”

“Could you pretend you can’t tell my whole life story from my tan lines or something? I’d like to sustain the fiction of you finding me irresistibly mysterious,” John said, only half-joking. He waited expectantly for the boy to nod before letting out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“Excellent. I’m John, by the way. John Watson.” He felt silly holding out his hand; the stranger shook it with rather more strength than John would have expected from such a skinny person.

“Sherlock Holmes.”

* * *

 John found himself still sitting in the lunch cart long after lunch was over. Sherlock had barely touched his food, but he had talked enthusiastically while John ate, his hands a pale flutter of movement. He was on his way back to Paris from visiting his grandmother in Budapest, he told John; although he was English, Sherlock was studying abroad at the insistence of his brother. John didn’t miss the derogatory tone he used when he said the word _brother_ , but he didn’t question him. John was surprised to find out they were both from London, and he wondered idly if they might have run into each other before John moved with his dad to the States and Sherlock went to France, but he realized it wasn’t a train of thought he’d particularly like to pursue. Hours went by as Sherlock talked about his many varied interests, which included biology, chemistry, and what many would have found to be an inappropriate interest in death and crimes. _Many_ , John thought, _but not me_.

John listened intently, but also participated animatedly in the conversation. He’d been sincerely worried when he’d heard Sherlock’s derisive comments about his classmates’ stupidity, often using the word _boring_ as though it was the very worst insult he could think of, but John was pleasantly surprised to find that Sherlock didn’t seem to find him very dull at all; on the contrary, Sherlock asked appropriate questions and supplied knowledge of medical oddities when John expressed his desire to become a doctor. Granted, John didn’t think the knowledge of the specific types of bruises that formed when a body was whipped post-mortem would prove to be particularly useful, but it was still interesting. Furthermore, he found that it was sort of wonderful to see Sherlock’s eyes brighten, his pale cheeks flushed pink with excitement, as he described in detail his many experiments, or as he walked John through some of his deductions about the passengers sharing the lunch cart with them.

When a voice on the speakers announced they had reached the city of Vienna, John’s destination, he tried to convince himself that the pang of disappointment he felt had more to do with his trip coming to an end than with leaving behind the curious man sitting across from him. He failed miserably, but he stood up, shook Sherlock’s hand one last time and went to retrieve his bags. As he walked toward the exit, he caught a glimpse of Sherlock, still sitting in the booth they’d shared in the lunch cart. His chin rested on his pale hand, fingertips brushing remarkably sharp cheekbones. An errant curl decorated his forehead and John found himself wishing he could brush it off his face. John came to a halt and began walking in Sherlock’s direction before making up his mind entirely. When Sherlock saw him, his eyebrows shot up inquisitively, but John thought he spotted a hopeful look in his eyes before Sherlock carefully composed his expression.

“Alright, this is going to sound insane, but if I don’t ask you this, it will haunt me for the rest of my life,” John heard himself sounding frantic, so he sat down and clutchted tightly the edge of the seat in an attempt to calm down.

“What?”

 “I want to keep talking to you. I have no idea what your situation is but I feel like we have a sort of…connection.” It almost sounded like a question.

“Yes, I rather think so,” Sherlock agreed, and John regained some of his nerve.

“Right. So listen, here’s what we should do: you should get off the train with me here in Vienna, come and check out the town. I have to catch a plane back to the States tomorrow morning and I don’t really have enough money for a hotel so I was just going to walk around, and it would be a lot nicer if you came with me. Besides, if I turn out to be some kind of loon you can just get on the next train to Paris or, I don’t know, take notes about me so should you run into a psycho years from now, you can spot him.”

Sherlock’s pale gaze was both unnerving and mesmerizing. John forced himself to hold his eyes until, amazingly, he saw Sherlock nod once and get up swiftly from his seat. John managed not to gape at him, but he couldn’t contain the giant smile slowly spreading across his face.

“Let me get my bag,” Sherlock said, and he turned up the corners of his mouth. John told himself Sherlock couldn’t possibly hear the frantic pounding of his heart, but to be honest, he wasn’t too sure, and he found he didn’t really care.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I am in dire need of a beta and a brit-picker so if anyone's interested, [here's my tumblr.](http://vaticancvmeos.tumblr.com/)


End file.
